A post shared by Jack Starbuck (@thatstarbuck) on May 11, 2017 at 8:20am PDT

I’ve taught some very interesting groups in my time:

Students that have found the free U2 album on the ipads and played music while recording river measurements

A-level biologists from London that have played hide-and-seek after class because they’ve never been to the countryside

“Miss, can woodlice fly? I bet they can.”

“Miss, is that a cow?” [Points at black & white horse]

A KS2 group that had to almost run back to centre from Box Hill after a freak thunderstorm, getting drenched by the time we were back (It was actually in Reigate)

A KS2 student that decided to make “leaf angels” with me (You rock!)

Every single student that’s sung the Banana song the next morning after a campfire

My last group that cheered so hard, and climbed on each other’s shoulders (in Bebbington. I feared for their heads)

All the students that have tried to jump the River Tillingbourne at Crossways, especially those that have failed (especially the ones that failed on camera!)

The students that have gotten stuck in Pagham Harbour with big muddy smiles

The students that wanted to spray paint rocks to investigate longshore drift (always a good idea!)

The KS2 children that made themselves beards out of burrs and stickyweed

The children that have fallen in the River Mole at the Stepping Stones (or leapt)

The Real Family Holiday families and children who have all been so curious- those that have climbed the starfish (I fear for you), the amazing red-haired super-mum who pushed a double buggy all the way to the shelter building area, the sweet kids that sat and made apple bird-feeders for hours last year, the huge set of families that made the most incredible shelter I’ve ever seen, that sat about 10 and didn’t leak a drop!

All the lovely schools that have brightened my days with thank-you letters…

I’ve had such a good time while I’ve been here (in all weathers- sun, rain, snow, thunderstorms), with so many incredible memories. Perhaps one day I’ll come back to teach again! After all, I haven’t yet had a pond named after me like Kate (one of our recent Education Assistants).

The other day I was talking to a friend and they asked me “I’d really like to know what you actually did at work every day”, because I’ve got interesting new stories every week. Well, as I run the blog (as much as I can, inbetween teaching), I thought I’d write up a standard day at the River Tillingbourne, where I spend most of my time.

A day at the River with a (big) GCSE group

8.45am– Turn up to the tutor’s office for our morning meeting. Check where everyone’s going (100 at the river? Fantastic.) Listen to Jack crack out some amazing jokes and have everyone laugh.

9.00am– Set up classroom with whiteboards, booklets and check equipment. Put morning tunes on the SmartBoard. Check in with other tutors they’re happy with the day & plans.

9.25am– Check school have arrived in the main office. Photocopy nominal roll and check numbers.

9.30am– Meet teachers & group. Try and organise 100 GCSE kids into 4 class groups. They get distracted by the goats fighting. Finally get them sorted with waterproofs and wellies in the cellar.

10.00am– Introduction to the river in the classroom, using ArcGIS and whiteboards and booklets. Give out equipment. Students get confused over hydroprops. Give out lots of pencils.

11.00am– Coach to the river. This is either 20 minutes of quiet, or utter raucous noise.

11.20am– Arrive at Crossways Farm. Give safety briefing and walk down road. Students scream at the muddy entrance. Horses sometimes try to escape. Give introduction to fieldwork and set students off.

11.45am– Stop horses from eating hydroprop. Watch student fall in river after attempting to jump across. Pick up 6 hydroprops from where they’ve been left discarded on the ground. Field sketches using SNOTT (Scale, Notes, Orientation, Time/Date, Title).

12.00pm– Coach to Abinger Hammer. Fieldwork first. Stand for 10 minutes watching last group mess around while rest of groups eat lunch.

12.30pm– Eat lunch now last group have finished. Hope nobody is dropping litter. Hope nobody has abandoned equipment in the river.

We had Real Family Holidays in on the 7th-10th April, one of my favourite times of year! The activities have been great fun, with some returning families from last year. Sunday morning was wild art around the grounds of Juniper Hall, and there were some excellent creations to be seen.

There were lots of inventive uses of natural materials collected from around the grounds. A mixture of stones, green leaves, a few flowers and sticks and twigs.

Gather round to enjoy everyone’s creations

There were all sorts of inspirations- the largest art of the day was a giant spider in it’s web on the Templeton lawn…

Spring is definitely on its way, with a delightfully warm weekend- barely even coat weather! We’ve been writing up our Spring Index here like last year to calculate when spring is starting. Last year the average index (which is across all the FSC centres) was the 26th April, which was the same as 2015. I think this year it might be earlier though, as we’ve already recorded quite a few early indicators!

We look primarily at 4 indicator species, although we’ve also been recording others as well- and important events such as first lunch outside (11th March), and first time wearing shorts (13th March). The 4 big ones though;

Swallow

Orange tip butterfly

Horse chestnut budding

Hawthorn flower

We’ve already recorded our first orange tip last week (27th March), a whole 18 days earlier than last year’s, which was on the 18th April.

Last week brought the first house martin to Crossways Farm as well on the 31st March, an exciting spot by Jack on the coach back from the river. I got my first swallow yesterday on the 3rd April, although up in Hertfordshire, not in our area for the Spring Index, so the competition’s still going for the first spot for us in Surrey.

We’re still waiting for our horse chestnut and hawthorn, but no doubt they’ll be on their flowering way soon. The warm weather today rewarded a pair of slow worms under the reptile mats. No mammals, but the bees were flying from the apiary down in the meadow as well, despite the grey clouds.

This week is invasive species week on Twitter, and I’ve been watching a lot of really interesting stuff come up on my feed all week. It’s been organised by the NNSS (Non-native Species Secretariat) and DEFRA to try and raise awareness of invasive species, and get people involved in recording schemes. Each day has a different theme:

My favourite resource I’ve found so far this week (although it’s only Tuesday that I’m writing this…) has been the Journal of Ecology’s virtual issue, with over 20 different papers about different invasive species and up-to-date research in the area. I’ve downloaded them to my laptop, but haven’t yet had the time to read them… Soon.

On the NNSS website, there’s loads of free training on biosecurityand identification of non-native species. To be able to tackle invasive species effectively, it’s important to have the distribution and evidence of where species are found- NNSS have developed a set of apps to record different invasive species, and help identify individuals. I’m not familiar with all of them, although Juniper Hall do record a lot of our species on iRecord. We also have a fantastic species list from the University of Cambridge who visit each year, and record literally everything they see. I’m also on a mission to get myBirdtrack back up to date, as I’ve been birding a lot recently but actually have no count of what I’ve been seeing!

Wednesday is identification and recording day- So a quick list of invasives I’ve seen at our field sites before…

I’ve not got time to update this again after today (which is still Wednesday, although I scheduled this for the end of the week) but it’s a cool initiative that seems to be educating a lot of people. I’ve definitely found a lot of interesting stuff I’m planning to read in the future this week!

Last Wednesday, the 15th February, the National Trust held their annual scrub bash on Mickleham Downs, particularly the Mickleham Gallops. Around 30 people volunteered their time to help with this conversation project. Although mostly National Trust workers and volunteers, there was also several members of the local community and of course, the Juniper Hall team which consisted of me and Kate (placement students), Sarah Bradford (head of grounds) and JH volunteer Bob.

The purpose of the day is to reclaim the land from the woods and encourage the natural chalk woodland plants to grow. A big part of the day was breaking up the crafted lines of scrubs that mark out the old runway which is an unnatural feature that the National Trust is slowly trying to get rid of.

The second main job was to remove dogwood. Dogwood is an invasive species and so to protect the other plant life it needs to be removed so the natural chalk grassland plants are able to grow.

Working hard to get rid of that dogwoodEnjoying a nice cup of tea and some cake!Bonfire!!

We had a large bonfire to dispose of all the cuttings as it would be very resource intensive to get rid of it all any other way, but having to drag large amounts of scrub to the fire was very hard work. However, it was nice to stand around the fire and warm up especially when the heaven’s opened, luckily the rain didn’t last long and everyone worked through it!

Overall it was a hard days work but rewarding to see what a difference we can make! It was also a great opportunity to meet and talk to the National Trust people and everyone from the community, they were all very welcoming and friendly which made the day even better!